British Lawn Tennis Association bans trans women from some female events

The British Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) has announced that transgender women will be banned from competing in some domestic tournaments.

The LTA oversees the domestic game, so the rule changes do not apply to international matches which are played on British soil, including Wimbledon, or other events such as an internal club tournament, where venues will decide on their own rules.

However, the updated policy on transgender and non-binary participation means trans women and people assigned male at birth won’t be allowed to play in the women’s category in matches against players from another club or county.

“We are changing our policy to restrict trans women and non-binary individuals assigned male at birth from playing in the women’s category in specified, inter-venue competitions,” an LTA press release read.

“These will be competitions ranging from our national championships through to local county and district leagues, where the purpose is to provide fair competitive opportunities. This policy helps ensure there is a common national standard for all these competitions, which is fair.

“For non-specified competitions within venues, the purpose is primarily to provide fun, social competition to enable people to feel part of their local tennis community and players will be able to familiarise themselves with the policy within their own venue and hence who they are likely to be playing against.

“These will range from weekend social tournaments through to club championships.”

The governing body went on to say: “We want to encourage local venues to ensure they are as inclusive as possible for trans and non-binary individuals, providing opportunities to compete in a friendly environment. In line with this, the LTA’s own local tennis leagues (held in park venues) will remain fully inclusive.

“The policy attempts to balance two responsibilities appropriately but in the knowledge that different people will reasonably have different views as to where that balance should lie.” 

Tennis and padel tennis are “gender-affected sports” where the “average man” has an advantage over the “average woman… [and] this advantage is likely to be retained to a significant degree in trans women, making competition potentially unfair”, the statement continued.

The policy will come into effect on 25 January but will kept under review “in light of any new scientific or other information”, an LTA spokesperson said.

The change come a couple of weeks after the Ladies Professional Golf Association restricted golfers in the women’s category to those either assigned female at birth or, if transgender, “[they had] not experienced any part of male puberty”.

In addition, any trans golfer must have “continuously maintained the concentration of testosterone in their serum below 2.5 nmol/l”, to qualify. The average for cis women is between 0.5 and 2.4 nmol/l.

In recent years, a number of sports governing bodies have taken similar steps.

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